Early Colonial Period Research Articles

The Cholera Epidemic of 1907 and the Formation of Colonial Epidemic Control Systems in Korea.

It was in 1907 when Korea was annexed by Japan in the field of health care systems as the Gwangje Hospital, Uihakgyo the National Medical School and the Korean Red Cross Hospital were merged into the colonial Daehan Hospital, and massive cholera epidemic controls by the Japanese Army were enforced. However, despite their importance, the cholera epidemic of 1907 in Korea and preventive measures taken at that time have not yet been studied extensively as a single research subject. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a more concrete and broader understanding of the Korea-Japan annexation of health care systems under the rule of the Japanese Resident-General of Korea by revealing new facts and correcting existing errors. In 1907, cholera was transmitted to Korea from China and Japan and spread across the Korean Peninsula, resulting in a major public health crisis, perhaps one of the most serious cholera outbreaks in the twentieth century Korea. Although Busan and Pyeongyang were the cities most infected with cholera, the targets for the most intensive interventions were Gyeongseong (Seoul) and Incheon, where the Japanese Crown Prince were supposed to make a visit. The Japanese police commissioner took several anti-cholera preventive measures in Gyeongseong, including searching out patients, disinfecting and blocking infected areas, and isolating the confirmed or suspected. Nevertheless, cholera was about to be rampant especially among Japanese residents. In this situation, Itō Hirobumi, the first Resident-General of Korea, organized the temporary cholera control headquarters to push ahead the visit of the Japanese Crown Prince for his political purposes to colonize Korea. To dispel Emperor Meiji's concerns, Itō had to appoint Satō Susumu, the famous Japanese Army Surgeon General, as an advisor, since he had much credit at Court. In addition, as the Japanese-led Korean police lacked epidemic control ability and experience, the headquarters became an improvised organization commanded by the Japanese Army in Korea and wielded great influence on the formation of the colonial disease control systems. Its activities were forced, violent, and negligent, and many Korean people were quite uncooperative in some anti-cholera measures. As a result, the Japanese Army in Korea took the initiative away from the Korean police in epidemic controls, serving the heavy-handed military policy of early colonial period. In short, the cholera epidemic and its control in 1907 were important events that shaped the direction of Japan's colonial rule.

Humans and animals in the Postclassic Cuchumatanes: the archaeological fauna from Chiantla Viejo (Huehuetenango, Guatemala)

Recent excavations at the highland site of Chiantla Viejo (Huehuetenango De- partment, Guatemala) were conducted to refine the site stratigraphy and understand population movements during the late Postclassic and early Contact era (AD 1250-1550). Excavations re- covered animal remains from these transitional contexts. This analysis represents one of the first zooarchaeological studies of a faunal assemblage in the Guatemalan highlands at the end of the pre-Hispanic period and into Spanish contact. The results highlight the changes and also the continuities experienced by the residents of this region during the early Colonial period: the persistence of long-distance exchange networks, the continuation of wild game hunting, and the early introduction of Eurasian domesticates.

Writing the Irish-Australian Self: Life-Writers and Irish Stereotypes, 1870-2000

This article surveys the history of Irish-Australian autobiography and memoir as a form of writing particularly well adapted to exploring the tensions and compromises of Irish-Australian identity. It draws on selected works published from the early colonial period to the end of the twentieth century written by men and women across a wide social spectrum, from archbishops, politicians and academics to bushrangers, barmaids and poets. It focuses on the process of self-construction at work in the writing, with particular attention to the ways in which contemporaneous Irish stereotypes are invoked, often rejected, and sometimes embraced as part of this process. The tentative suggestion is made that a balanced appreciation of this form of writing may have been hindered by a bias evident in much recent Irish-Australian historiography towards interpreting the historical relationship between the Irish diaspora and the dominant Australian culture in conflictual terms, and that the strong impulse towards friendly assimilation, an equally important part of the historical record, deserves equal recognition.

Cultural Astronomy in Hispanic-Indigenous Contexts of Central Chile

We present the results of an archaeoastronomical analysis of structures dating from the Inca and early colonial periods in the Mapocho River basin, Chile. Our purpose is to show possible continuities or ruptures in the creation and management of architectural and natural spaces, particularly those linked to the observation of astronomical phenomena with ceremonial and calendrical significance in the Andean world. We focus on Santiago, where we undertook topographical and horizon survey work at the Main Square, Metropolitan Cathedral, San Francisco Church and Santa Lucía Hill, and evaluate documentary and ethnographic sources. Using models developed in cultural astronomy and landscape archaeology, we found these places were ancient observation spots for the Sun and Moon around the solstices, equinoxes and lunar standstills. Sightlines (ceques) may have connected these places to potentially sacred elements of the environment from a central point located in the Main Square (haukaypata).

General Labour History of Africa: Workers, Employers and Governments, 20th–21st Century

General Labour History of Africa: Workers, Employers and Governments, 20th–21st Century

Constructing from the Invisible: Conceptualizing Indigenous Village Layout and Dynamics in the Circum-Caribbean

ABSTRACT In recent years, thousands of posthole features have been located during open-area excavations of Indigenous archaeological sites in the Caribbean Islands. However, the reconstruction of village spatial organization and its changes over time is sometimes a challenging task, because Indigenous village occupation can span more than 500 years. This article presents archaeological data from rescue excavations at Argyle, an Indigenous village site dating to the late pre-colonial and early colonial period on Saint Vincent Island in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean Islands. The archaeological data are juxtaposed with an ethnographic reading of seventeenth-century European documentary sources of the Lesser Antilles and two ethnoarchaeological village studies conducted with Arawakan and Cariban-speaking peoples in the Tropical Lowlands of mainland South America. This study demonstrates the value of an integrated approach in understanding the Argyle site and conceptualizing the dynamics of Indigenous village settlements in the wider Circum-Caribbean area.

Spaces of occupation: Colonial enclosure and confinement in British Malaya

This article examines how the geography of foreign occupation changed in British Malaya between 1895 and 1960. In particular, the article reveals how notions related to enclosure and confinement influenced the introduction of new territorial and spatial categories in British Malaya that enclosed the region's landscape and natural environment while simultaneously concentrating the region's diverse population into racially and economically segregated communities in the Malay interior. This geography, crafted during the early colonial period, came to have particular significance in the period following World War Two. At that time, during the so-called Malayan Emergency, the British administration forcibly resettled hundreds of thousands of Malaya's rural inhabitants into highly regulated and repressive state spaces, known as New Villages, White and Black Areas, and Regrouping Areas. Utilizing a mixture of secondary sources, archival materials, and digital mapping technologies, this article shows how the creation of these new Emergency spaces were not novel but were a continuation of longstanding patterns of land control in the colony that remade Malaya's natural environment on a vast scale.

The Onset of Auto-tourism in Colonial Tunisia: ظهور سياحة السيارات في تونس تحت الاستعمار

This article relates the genesis of auto-tourism in Tunisia during the early colonial period and analyses the various stages it went through. The paper also explores the main features of this new travel/tourist activity and how it was introduced, represented, promoted and developed. This essay is a historical analysis of auto-tourism, a new socio-cultural phenomenon, which reached French colonial Tunisia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and affected Tunisian society and culture in a variety of ways. The paper equally shows how the automobile contributed over time to the development of Tunisian tourism more generally. The history of tourism in North Africa is awaiting further case studies on the growth of auto-tourism, a highly neglected aspect in the historical literature, because of the significance of auto-tourism to the long-term socio-economic and cultural evolutions of the region.

Mapping Complex Land Use Histories and Urban Renewal Using Ground Penetrating Radar: A Case Study from Fort Stanwix

Fort Stanwix National Monument, located in Rome, NY, is a historic park with a complex use history dating back to the early Colonial period and through the urban expansion and recent economic revitalization of the City of Rome. The goal of this study was to conduct a GPR investigation over an area approximately 1 acre in size to identify buried historic features (particularly buildings) so park management can preserve these resources and develop appropriate educational programming and management plans. The GPR recorded reflection events consistent with our expectations of historic structures. Differences in size, shape, orientation, and depth suggest that these responses likely date to different time periods in the site’s history. The GPR recorded other reflection anomalies that are difficult to interpret without any additional information, which suggests that pairing high-density geophysical data with limited excavations is critical to elaborate a complex site’s intricate history.

Bárbara Direito (2020), Terra e Colonialismo em Moçambique. A região de Manica e Sofala sob a Companhia de Moçambique, 1892-1942

When Mocambique applied successfully to join the Commonwealth in 1995, a lot of people were taken by surprise, not least the British Government. However, those who knew something of Mocambique’s history understood that, although not formally a British colony, much of country had, during the early colonial period, been ruled by British-owned companies – the Niassa Company, the Mocambique Company and the extensive territories effectively under the control of Sena Sugar, while the largely Britis...

Images and Landscape: The (Dis)ordering of Colonial Territory (Quito in the Eighteenth Century)

This article explores the role played by images of the Virgin Mary in the ordering of space during the colonial period, as well as in the disruption of such order as a gesture of resistance by subordinate groups. In the Real Audiencia de Quito of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, civil and religious authorities used miraculous images of the Virgin Mary as aids in the founding of reducciones, which assured the imposition of Christian civility upon the Native population. Legal records suggest that in the second half of the eighteenth century Indigenous communities deployed similar strategies as a means of asserting their own concerns. Native actors physically manipulated Marian images in times of conflict, moving them around or apprehending them either to legitimize their desertion of colonial settlements or to resist forced relocation. In both the early colonial period and in the eighteenth century, the key strategy of shaping sacred landscapes was implemented in both Andean and Christian traditions.

Institutionalization of veterinary science in colonial India

This brief report examines the origin of the Western veterinary medical science and development of various veterinary medical Institutions in India during the colonial period. The veterinary science has been in existence in India since the ancient period. During the medieval period, the animal husbandry was also paid attention. But, with the expansion of British rule, the whole scenario of animal husbandry practices changed in India. The cattle diseases such as Cattle Plague (Rinderpest), Foot and Mouth Disease, Anthrax, Haemorrhagic Septicaemia, Blackquarter etc. were widespread and these had an adverse effect on the economy and public health in India There were no veterinary schools and colleges to control the animal diseases during the pre and early colonial period. The Indian Cattle Plague Commission (1869) recommended the establishment of veterinary institutions under the colonial management. As a result, Imperial Bacteriological Laboratory was established at Poona (1890); further, shifted to Mukteshwar in 1893 with a branch of Izatnagar (1913). Within a decade of its introduction nearly half a million doses were being administered annually. The introduction of the Western veterinary science was an important landmark in the history of the Indian animal husbandry. The beginning of animal vaccination was an important milestone which ushered in the process of immunization for the animals.

Catholicism and Taki Onqoy in the Early Colonial Period: Colonial Entanglements of Church Interments at Iglesiachayoq (Chicha‐Soras Valley, Ayacucho, Peru)

ABSTRACTArchaeologists of colonial encounters utilize the concept of entanglement to explore shifting cultural relationships between European and Native populations during colonial encounters. In the chaotic decades after Spanish conquest of Peru (1532), Andeans of the south‐central highlands practiced a revitalization cult known as Taki Onqoy (Quechua: “dancing/singing sickness”). Taki Onqoy preachers advocated for a rejection of Spanish food, culture, and religion in favor of a return to veneration of the local deities practiced prior to Spanish invasion. Based on results from excavation of the Catholic church at the site of Iglesiachayoq (Chicha‐Soras Valley, Ayacucho, Peru), this article explores the burial practices of individuals interred beneath the church floor. Contrary to primary documents, which portray Andeans as idolatrous rebels or pious converts, interments displayed an array of entangled practices. Within the milieu of contrasting religious mandates (Catholic and Taki Onqoy), individuals interred their deceased kin in ways that intertwined both traditions.

The Material Culture of Buddhist Propagation: Reinstating Buddhism in Early Colonial Seoul

The restrictive measures against Buddhism under the Neo-Confucian Chosŏn dynasty resulted in the decline of Korean Buddhism at the start of the twentieth century. As the Chosŏn government started to make sweeping changes in the name of modernization, Korean Buddhist monks found an opportunity to revitalize their tradition through measures of reform. This paper examines one instance of attempts to bring Korean Buddhism back to the center of the country in the early twentieth century. The establishment of the Buddhist Central Propagation Space in 1920, examined thoroughly for the first time in this study, shows a meaningful yet ultimately unsuccessful attempt at modernizing Korean Buddhism in the dynamics of the colonial Buddhism. Moving beyond the nationalist critique of its founder Yi Hoegwang, who has been heavily criticized for his pro-colonialist undertakings in later historiography, I reconsider the significance of this propagation space in the history of Buddhist propagation and respatialization of Seoul during the early colonial period. My analysis of Three Gates in a Single Mind commissioned for this urban Buddhist temple in 1921 not only shows the diversity of modern Korean Buddhist paintings but also reveals a new role assigned to Buddhist icons in the changing context of Pure Land practice. I also discuss the seminal contribution of the court lady Ch’ŏn Ilch’ŏng to the founding of the propagation space, thereby restoring the voice of one important laywoman in the modernization of Korean Buddhism.

An analytical study of the Huexotzinco Codex using X-ray fluorescence, fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy, and portable Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy

The Huexotzinco Codex is one of the earliest surviving manuscripts from the early colonial period of Mexico. The codex pertains to the legal case of conquistador Hernán Cortés and contains paintings and documents detailing the seizure of Cortés’ personal properties and over-taxation of his Huexotzincan allies by the colonial government in New Spain (present-day Mexico). Eight paintings within the manuscript were subjected to non-invasive analytical techniques revealing the pigment palette and production methodology. The findings of this study show a mixture of pre- and colonial codex production practices as well a unique Maya blue formulation and the identification of a silicate material used as a matrix for an organic yellow dye.

A Seventeenth Century Poqomchi’ (Mayan) Dictionary and Dominican Evangelizing Tradition in Highland Guatemala

One of the first written sources containing information about the Poqomchi’ language (Mayan family, Guatemala) is the trilingual Poqomchi’-Spanish-Latin dictionary dating from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its author was a Dominican missionary, Dionisio de Zúñiga, although his work is based on earlier dictionaries of his predecessors. This paper analyses Zúñiga’s dictionary in the context of Dominican evangelizing tradition. Whereas the descriptions of certain lexical entries prove that the author was familiar with the culture and customs of the Poqomchi’ people, some other terms, specifically those denoting pre-Columbian deities and native religious concepts, seem to be derived from earlier missionary texts including Domingo de Vico’s famous Theologia Indorum. These intertextualities confirm the intellectual continuity among Dominican missionaries in Highland Guatemala during the early colonial period.

Mullawirraburka and Kadlitpinna: how and why influential individuals facilitated amicable cross-cultural relations in the Adelaide district, 1836‒1840

When early colonists arrived on the Fleurieu Peninsula and Adelaide Plains in 1836, individual mediators were essential to the establishment of harmonious cross-cultural relations. Focusing primarily on the actions of Mullawirraburka and Kadlitpinna – known by colonists respectively as ‘King John’ and ‘Captain Jack’ of the Adelaide Tribe – this article demonstrates how and why, during the early colonial period, Aboriginal people incorporated Europeans and their goods into existing social, political and economic networks. Esteemed warriors such as Mullawirraburka and Kadlitpinna proactively formed relations with the newcomers and shaped unfolding events. In doing so, they increased their influence among their own and neighbouring groups. In providing a nuanced interpretation of a range of sources and the actions of Mullawirraburka and Kadlitpinna, this article contributes to understandings of the early colonial history of South Australia and the complexities of interactions between first peoples and colonisers.

From Hindustani to (Fiji) Hindi and Back to Fiji Baat? Metalinguistic Reconstructions of the National Variety of Hindi in Fiji

ABSTRACT One factor that has united Fijians of Indian descent is the language of Fiji Hindi, or Fiji Baat. Developed on the plantations of the indenture period, it is now the mother tongue of virtually all Indo-Fijians, distinct from the Standard Hindi that is taught in schools. This paper examines the way these two varieties of Hindi have been metalinguistically reconstructed from the early colonial period to the present day, focusing particularly on the labels Hindustani, Hindi, Fiji Hindi and Fiji Baat. We examine the extent to which Fiji Hindi fits into the pan-Fijian identity that is supposed to unite all Fiji citizens without drawing attention to ethnic difference. We argue that the acceptance of Fiji Hindi as part of a hybrid national identity is impeded both by this political erasure of ethnicity, and by the lingering negative attitudes expressed by its own speakers about the intralingual variation within Hindi.

Indigenous Routes and Resource Materialities in the Early Spanish Colonial World: Comparative Archaeological Approaches

The early colonial period witnessed new scales of connectivity and unprecedented projects of resource extraction across the Spanish Americas. Yet such transformations also drew heavily on preexisting Indigenous landscapes, technologies, and institutions. Drawing together recent discussions in archaeology and geography about mobility and resource materialities, this article takes the early colonial route as a central object of investigation and contributes to new emerging interpretive frameworks that make sense of Spanish colonialism in the Americas as a variable, large-scale, and materially constituted process. Using three case studies—theruta de Colónon the island of Hispaniola, the routes connecting the southeastern Caribbean islands with mainland South America, and theruta de la platain the south-central Andes—we develop a comparative archaeological analysis that reveals divergent trajectories of persistence, appropriation, and erasure in the region's routes and regimes of extraction and mobility during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Latin American Indigeneities through Settler Colonialism, Neoliberalism, and Cyberspace

Latin American Indigeneities through Settler Colonialism, Neoliberalism, and Cyberspace Michelle Vasquez Ruiz (bio) Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. By Shannon Speed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 176 pages. $27.95 (paper). Indigenous Dispossession: Housing and Maya Indebtedness in Mexico. By M. Bianet Castellanos. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021. 192 pages. $25.00 (paper). Indigenous Interfaces: Space, Technology, and Social Networks in Mexico and Central America. Edited by Jennifer Gomez Menjivar and Gloria Elizabeth Chacon. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2019. 304 pages. $35.00 (paper). Colonization is not a monolithic project. It is a project that is inflicted in varying yet consistently insidious ways. The books under review here explore how colonization in Latin America continues to be deployed through racial and gender violence as well as neoliberal policies and economic structures. They pay close attention to how Indigenous populations experience and address these ongoing structures of oppression. M. Bianet Castellanos's Indigenous Dispossession: Housing and Maya Indebtedness in Mexico examines how the mechanisms of neoliberal housing polices uphold settler colonialism in Mexico. Through ethnographic research Castellanos considers how Maya migrant communities in Cancun are disproportionately affected by predatory housing policies that push them to abandon Indigenous conceptions of communal landownership. Her work recognizes how the process of private homeownership attempts to deracialize and dispossess these Indigenous populations. Shannon Speed's Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State, based on interviews with Indigenous women in immigration detention centers, further explores how mechanisms of settler colonialism, [End Page 403] neoliberalism, and gender violence have made Indigenous women vulnerable to different forms of violence and abuse. Their heart-wrenching memories shared throughout the book demonstrate how in their immigration journeys they traverse many layers of gender violence inflicted by family members, by criminal organizations, and by state officials. Jennifer Gomez Menjivar and Gloria Elizabeth Chacon in their edited anthology Indigenous Interfaces: Space, Technology, and Social Networks in Mexico and Central America challenge the notion that Indigeneity and technology are incompatible. On the contrary, the essays in this collection demonstrate how cyberspace is embraced and utilized as a tool to exercise agency, preserve Indigenous culture and language, and challenge the colonial injustice that Indigenous populations continue to face. Together the books under review offer us new ways to think about how Indigenous peoples are addressing modern iterations of colonial and settler colonial structures. Settler Colonialism and Neoliberalism in Latin American In 2017 American Quarterly presented a forum on settler colonialism in Latin America, edited by Castellanos. Working across the disciplines of Native American studies and Latin American studies, contributing scholars sought to address the utility of settler colonialism as a framework outside the Anglo colonial project. In their contributions to the forum, Castellanos and Speed both outlined the significance and limitations of applying such a theory to the study of Indigenous peoples in Latin America. Their books under review here expand on these original arguments and provide exemplary scholarship demonstrating why this perspective is necessary for future scholarship in the fields of Native American studies, Latin American studies, and American studies. Castellanos's introduction to the 2017 forum expands on Patrick Wolfe's definition of settler colonialism by challenging how "efforts to distinguish regimes of colonialism in the Americas by their method of dispossession, as rooted in either land or labor expropriation," produce rigid binaries that occlude how in Latin America colonialism happens through both the extraction of Indigenous land and labor.1 She argues that "the logics of dispossession and elimination, which are key tenets of a settler colonial model, were not isolated to British imperialism; they were also central to Spanish and Portuguese imperial projects."2 Speed points out that in Latin America labor regimes that exploited Indigenous populations such as the encomiendas, repartimientos, and haciendas in Mexico and Central America also functioned as a "mechanism of dispossession."3 [End Page 404] Her book Incarcerated Stories further details how these structures worked to eliminate Indigenous peoples in the early colonial periods. While independence is thought to have ended these forms of colonization, Speed builds off the work of Richard Gott to outline how settlement actually...